e it may be honestly and
justly executed. I am sensible that speculation is always liable to error.
If there be any capital defects in this constitution, it is most probable
that experience alone will discover them. Provision is made for an
alteration if, on trial, it be found necessary.

When your children see the candor and greatness of mind, with which you
lay the foundation, they will be inspired with equity to furnish and adorn
the superstructure.

A LANDHOLDER.

The Landholder, VI.

The Connecticut Courant, (Number 1194)

MONDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1787.

He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbor
cometh and searcheth him.

TO THE LANDHOLDERS AND FARMERS:

The publication of Col. Mason's(31) reasons for not signing the new
Constitution, has extorted some truths that would otherwise in all
probability have remained unknown to us all. His reasons, like Mr.
Gerry's, are most of them _ex post facto_, have been revised in New Y----k
by R. H. L.(32) and by him brought into their present artful and insidious
form. The factious spirit of R. H. L., his implacable hatred to General
Washington, his well-known intrigues against him in the late war, his
attempts to displace him and give the command of the American army to
General Lee, is so recent in your minds it is not necessary to repeat
them. He is supposed to be the author of most of the scurrility poured out
in the New-York papers against the new constitution.

Just at the close of the Convention, whose proceedings in general were
zealously supported by Mr. Mason, he moved for a clause that no navigation
act should ever be passed but with the consent of two thirds of both
branches;(33) urging that a navigation act might otherwise be passed
excluding foreign bottoms from carrying American produce to market, and
throw a monopoly of the carrying business into the hands of the eastern
states who attend to navigation, and that such an exclusion of foreigners
would raise the freight of the produce of the southern states, and for
these reasons Mr. Mason would have it in the power of the southern states
to prevent any navigation act. This clause, as unequal and partial in the
extreme to the southern states, was rejected; because it ought to be left
on the same footing with other national concerns, and because no state
would have a right to complain of a navigation act which should leave the
carrying business equally open to them all